soldiers saw him so he could be outed to the taliban. and instead, his intent all along was to kill people. so he seemed too good to be true in some ways, and in fact he really was. >> joby, i always wondered in the interim between the events of september 11 or tora bora, the battle of december of '01 and the takedown in abadabad, did we have a line on zawahiri or bin laden? the answer is we didn't. and you're the expert from this book. but it was the coldness of that trail that allowed our guard to be dropped, because we were so desperate for all the right with reasons to get either of them, that we wanted to believe this guy was legitimate. >> yes. and if you think about it, there are many people that claim that, oh, yes, we know where sooild is hiding. the fact is his trail had gone ice-cold. had been so for years. and this was a real opportunity, it seemed, to get very close to him or at least to his deputy, perhaps days away from a really important strike. so yes, everybody was excited. and the excitement not all the way to the whit